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Measure the height of each student in your class to the nearest centimetre. Are there any outliers? Use an appropriate method to find the mean, median and mode. Compare all three measures. Which value gives the best measure of central tendency? Why? Which organizations or companies would find such statistics useful?
Find out what your grade or school's student population has been for the last 10 years. Are there any outliers? Use an appropriate method to find the mean, median and mode. Compare all three measures. Which value gives the best measure of central tendency? Why? How would your school or school board use such statistics?
Find the final scores of your favourite school sport from your school's records. Collect the scores, both wins and losses, for the last 10 years. (If the data are not available, use data for your favourite sporting team.)
What was the mean final score, including both wins and losses, for the past 10 years?
What was the median final score, including both wins and losses, for the past 10 years?
Are any of the mean final scores similar to the corresponding median final score?
Given these values, what can be said about the distributions?
What are some of the problems you might come across in trying to use statistics to compare school or other sports teams of the past with those of today?
For ordinal data, can you think of occasions where the mode would be of more use than the median or mean? Discuss as a class.